Final Shoot.

So after the disappointment of my second shoot, I needed another plan of action. I still wanted to look at environmental issues, but needed a different approach. In the end I decided to look at the human impact on our environment at a more personal and local level. I went out with a couple of carrier bags and collected litter and rubbish that was just lying about.

I found bottles, cans, crisp packets, a pile of rubble, and an old umbrella. I did draw the line at picking up used nappies of which I spotted three of.

The idea of the picture was to create a landscape made of refuse and rubbish while the image of the earth floated in the sky.

I set the scene up on the floor on a black sheet I had, using an old cardboard box to give some elevation. Again, I used my video lights, so I could see the lighting as I was setting up the shot.

(...A quick shot of how I set my scene up on the floor of my studio space...)

In addition to my pile of rubbish, I used some of the leaves, fallen fruit and dead flowers again.. And also a couple of weeds I pulled and some Ivy.

I also used some torn pages out of the atlas and burned the edges to represent damage to the planet, and once again used the cut out of earth in the background.

Lighting was a bit difficult, as there were many shadows from the objects in the scene and in the end I ended up having the key light above and in front, and to light the planet I used a little hand held torch so that I didn't create any light spill on to the background.

Once I was happy, it was just a question of a few minor compositional adjustments, and getting the right exposure which was 1 second at ISO400 f/16

I did use slight camera movements to help with the depth of the scene, a slight front tilt forward and a little twist to the left as you look at the image.

(...My final image after some slight level correction in post production...)

Overall I think I have achieved an interesting result, and have met my personal goal of highlighting ecological issues. I will always look upon this image as a compromise, due to the poor results of my second shoot. Once again, this may be something I will come back to at a later date, however I may develop this idea and consider trying something similar on location.